Wounded Heroes Boxed Set

by Judith Arnold

  "I never was a college girl," she retorted, just to be contrary. "I was a college woman." She swallowed her anger. Tom had traveled here from some distance; she supposed she owed him a modicum of hospitality. "You aren’t looking so bad yourself," she said, even though she found his yuppie polish not to her taste. "Are you still teaching at B.U.?"

  "An associate professor," he said with a grin. "Tenured, as a matter of fact."

  "Congratulations." She really ought to offer him a drink—and if he weren’t looking so damned proud of himself, she would. Instead, she said, "You’re right—I’m wondering what you’re doing here."

  "Have you got any beer?" he asked, compensating for her shortcomings as a hostess by taking over. "I’ve been lecturing all morning and talking on the phone all afternoon. I’m a mite parched."

  A mite parched . Bonnie suppressed a grimace at his pretentiousness and headed into the house, not bothering to comment when Tom trailed her indoors. She would be courteous to him out of respect for Gary’s memory. Perhaps that would help to alleviate her sense of guilt.

  "I see you still have your little exhibit set up, just like at your place in Cambridge," Tom noted, lingering in front of the fireplace mantel. Admiring the photographs in which he appeared, Bonnie thought with a scowl.

  "Some things never change," she said dryly, referring more to Tom than to her home’s decor. She continued into the kitchen, and Tom followed. She pulled a bottle of beer from a shelf in the refrigerator and handed it to him. Then she filled a glass with apple juice for herself. "Let’s go back out on the front porch," she suggested. "It’s a pleasant afternoon, and I’d like to keep an eye out for Shane." She refrained from adding that she couldn’t bear the thought of being alone in the house with Tom, especially when she was so keyed up about what had happened earlier that day. She hoped the balmy breezes would help to dissipate her nervousness.

  "Shane!" Tom exclaimed, as if the mere mention of Bonnie’s son sent him into orbit. "How is the little blond bambino?"

  "The little blond bambino is thirteen and taller than I am," Bonnie informed Paul. "Right now he’s probably riding his bike all over town, courting a flat tire." She led the way back out to the porch and gestured toward the rocker on which Tom had been sitting. She sat in the other one and took a sip of her juice.

  "If he’s anything like I was at that age, he’s courting something much more interesting than a flat tire," Tom said with a wink.

  God forbid that Shane would be anything like Tom, Bonnie thought, although she hid her sentiments behind an impassive smile. "So, what brings you to Northford?"

  "Well, as I said, I was on the telephone for much of the afternoon." He took a long drink of beer, then settled more comfortably in the chair and propped his feet on the railing again. "I had an interesting chat with one Kevin McCoy, on leave from the Boston Globe. It seems he’s writing a book about Gary."

  "With my permission," Bonnie confirmed. "I hope you don’t mind that I gave him your name. I want him to write a well-rounded biography. That entails talking with as many of the people from the Cambridge Manifesto days as possible."

  "So he told me." Tom took another drink of beer. "I assume this means he’ll be speaking with Marcie, too?"

  "Of course. Marcie was in at the beginning," Bonnie pointed out. Indeed, it had been at Marcie’s urging that Bonnie had first attended one of Gary’s campus rallies. Marcie had been involved in the movement even before Bonnie—although Bonnie had often suspected that Marcie’s participation was based less on her political views than on her desire to be a part of the action, to revolt against her conservative parents and to feel important. And, of course, they’d all been close friends—Bonnie, Marcie, Gary and Tom and the others.

  Marcie had continued working part-time with Gary even after the war had ended and the rest of the Manifesto gang had left Cambridge for other pursuits. She’d been on Gary’s doomed trip to California, she and Tom both, while Bonnie had stayed at home with Shane. They’d been at the auditorium with Gary when he’d been heckled; they’d been with him when he’d been struck down by a hit-and-run driver. They’d been at the hospital when the emergency-room physician had declared him dead. They’d been the ones to telephone Bonnie with the news.

  "I want Kevin McCoy to talk to the people who knew Gary best. That certainly includes you and Marcie," she said, trying to chase away the mournful memories before they overwhelmed her.

  "You should have notified me," Tom reproached, "just to give me some warning. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to talk to this guy or not."

  Bonnie smiled in spite of herself. "Obviously, that didn’t stop you from talking to him for much of the afternoon."

  A flicker of indignation passed across Tom’s face at her subtle dig. Then he relaxed and took another sip of beer. "Anyway, I tried phoning you as soon as I got off the phone with this McCoy character, but you weren’t home. And then I thought, say, why not drive out and see the old girl in her new environment? We could do dinner, reminisce about old times...whatever feels right. I don’t have any classes tomorrow morning."

  "I do," Bonnie said laconically. She wasn’t sure whether she was misconstruing Tom’s invitation by viewing it as a come-on. But even if his motives were pure, she wasn’t in the mood to share a dinner and an evening of nostalgic chit-chat with him. If she wanted to go out for dinner with anyone, it certainly wasn’t Tom Schuyler.

  She wished she could convince herself that it wasn’t Paul, either.

  "Still teaching the little kiddies?" Tom broke into her thoughts. His arrogant tone implied that he considered college professors vastly superior to elementary school teachers.

  Why should he feel superior? she thought bitterly. The only reason he’d managed to become a professor was that, unlike Gary, he hadn’t sacrificed his graduate studies to devote himself full-time to the goals of the Cambridge Manifesto. Political demonstrations were fun—and groupies even more fun—as long as they didn’t interfere with the completion of his Ph.D.

  "Yes," she said coolly. "I’m still teaching fourth grade."

  "Aren’t you bored to tears out here?" he asked, surveying the front yard and the surrounding forest. "I mean, what does one do here for stimulation?"

  "One reads," she answered, mimicking his stilted phrasing. "One talks to other people. One takes long walks and meditates. I’ve been living here for three years, Tom, and I haven’t gotten bored yet."

  "What do you do for a social life?"

  "None of your business," she snapped. If it weren’t for what had occurred in the greenhouse a half hour ago, she would have been able to handle Tom’s nosy questions calmly. But right now the mention of a social life led inexorably to thoughts of Paul, troubling thoughts of everything that was wrong between them, and everything that could have been right if not for the long, grim shadow history cast over their friendship. "How’s your social life?" she asked, not because she was interested but because she was tired of Tom’s one-sided interrogation of her. "The last time I saw you—outside Grendel’s Den, wasn’t it?"

  Tom grinned. "You were with a bunch of school teachers, weren’t you?"

  Tom had been with a woman, of course. "You told me," Bonnie reminded him, "that your life was going to remain unsettled until you got tenure. Well, now you’ve got tenure. When are you going to settle down?"

  "Settle down?" he repeated, wrinkling his nose. "You sound like my mother."

  "I am a mother," she reminded him.

  "Well, I have no intention of becoming a mother myself," Tom quipped. "You know me, Bonnie—I’m an alley cat. Always was, always will be. I have the feeling I’m much better as a boyfriend than I’d ever be as a husband."

  "In other words, you still aren’t ready to grow up."

  Tom eyed her skeptically. "And you’re still the Grand Domesticator," he shot back. "I warned Gary, way back when, that if he married you it would put a real damper on his social life. Fortunately..." He drifted off and sipped his beer.
<
br />   "Fortunately, he ignored you," Bonnie completed. "I don’t condemn you, Tom, but...I mean, come on. You’re in your forties, and you’re still running around like a kid."

  "Most men in their forties are running around like kids, marriage notwithstanding," he said. "Marcie’s divorced, by the way."

  "Oh, that’s too bad," Bonnie said genuinely. "I’m sorry to hear it." She’d lost touch with Marcie after Gary’s death, but she’d heard through the grapevine that her old friend had gotten married a few years ago and settled in Phoenix. "What happened? Did her husband run around like a kid?"

  "Not all alley cats are male," Tom commented, winking again. "Marcie’s an ardent believer in equal opportunity. Don’t shed any tears for her, Bonnie."

  "Have you got her address?" Whether it was a result of Tom’s unexpected appearance, the news of Marcie’s divorce or simply the fact that Kevin McCoy’s book had gotten her to reminiscing about the past a great deal lately, Bonnie suddenly felt the urge to touch base with her old friend. "I’d really like to talk to her."

  "I...don’t know," Tom hedged.

  "But I want Kevin to interview her about Gary. You said you wished I had warned you before he contacted you. Maybe I ought to warn her."

  "I’ll warn her," Tom promised. "And if she wants to talk to you, I’ll give her your number."

  "Why wouldn’t she want to talk to me?" Bonnie asked, bewildered.

  Tom shrugged. "You had the good marriage, Bonnie. You and Gary had a son. She was a flop as a wife. Maybe she’s jealous."

  Bonnie could hardly believe that. She and Marcie might have lost contact over the years, but there were still so many bonds that tied them together, so many shared experiences. So many afternoons at the old house on Avon Street, sipping herbal tea and proofreading Conscientious-Objector petitions, so many marches through so many cities, so many late nights listening to Joni Mitchell’s "For The Roses" album and trying to imagine their futures when they should have been studying for their midterms. They’d been through so much together; even if they’d lost the closeness of their early friendship, Bonnie couldn’t imagine any reason why Marcie wouldn’t want to hear from her.

  Before she could question Tom further, however, she was distracted by the sound of a truck bumping along the last few yards of Pond Road where it ran into Fair Hollow Lane near her house. She glanced toward the corner in time to see a green Tremaine Nursery pickup steering onto her driveway.

  ***

  FOR NO GOOD REASON, Paul decided to drive down Pond Road. It wasn’t on his way home, and the last thing he wanted to do was run the risk of seeing Bonnie. But he doubted that she’d just happen to be standing across the street from her house at the junction of Pond and Fair Hollow when he cruised by. And right now, he felt the compulsion to conquer something, even if it was only a decaying back road. He was anxious and angry and frustrated in all sorts of ways. He was hoping that a good, hard drive would help him to unwind.

  He cruised to the eastern border of the town green and then south, watching for Pond Road. As soon as he made the turn, his front tires dipped into a deep pothole, tossing him unceremoniously up and down on his seat. He jiggled the steering wheel and leveled the truck, then smiled. One obstacle down, a few million more to go.

  Damn her. Damn Bonnie. It bothered the hell out of him that, according to her son, she had no difficulty navigating this road in her car. It irritated him that she could have walked out of the greenhouse after a kiss like that. He wasn’t going to let her get the better of him, not when it came to his memorial or romance or the history of the past twenty years. Or this damned obstacle-course of a road, he thought, bouncing in and out of another pothole.

  The dense canopy of leaves overhead darkened the pavement. Paul waited until his eyes adjusted to the gloom, then forged ahead, circumventing a large rock and then a stretch of crumbling asphalt. At the sight of a car approaching from the opposite direction, he almost steered off the narrow lane into a shallow gully.

  A short distance further along he spotted a mysterious movement, a gliding figure in silhouette. Driving closer, he discerned that it was someone riding a bicycle; closer yet, he noticed the mop of pale hair crowning the rider’s head, and the bulky hightops on his feet. Paul bumped the truck over a fallen branch and then slowed to a halt alongside the cyclist.

  "Shane," he called through the open passenger window.

  Shane had coasted to the eroding edge of the road to leave room for the truck. When he saw who the driver was, he halted and planted his feet on the ground. "Hey, Paul! What’s happening?"

  "I’ve decided it’s time to come to terms with this road," Paul said.

  Shane grinned and shoved his hair out of his face. "It’s a nasty road, isn’t it."

  "In every sense of the word." Paul gazed through the windshield at the rubble ahead, then turned back to Shane. "I’m sure with practice I’ll get the hang of it."

  "So, like, am I supposed to start working for you this Saturday?" Shane asked.

  "Unless you’ve got a problem."

  "No problem." Shane eyed the truck. "I could work after school, too, if you want."

  "No. After school you should be doing your homework." Paul imagined that his comment made him sound like a prig, but he knew Bonnie would never allow her son to work more than a few hours a week.

  "I don’t get much homework," Shane declared.

  "Yeah, sure," Paul said, his knowing smile contradicting his stern words. "I went to the same school you’re going to. I remember exactly how much homework the teachers gave."

  "Yeah, well..." Shane shrugged. "Me and Matt get it all done in study hall."

  Paul laughed in disbelief. "Are you coming from Matt’s house now?" he asked.

  Shane glanced around him, weighing his answer. Then he leaned toward the open window, letting his bike tilt between his legs. "Don’t tell my mom," he whispered conspiratorially, "but me and Matt were down at Breaker Gorge."

  "Why shouldn’t I tell your mom?"

  "That’s where I got my flat tire last week. I was real careful this time, though. We parked our bikes up near the top and went down on foot." Shane studied Paul curiously. "Did you use to go climbing down there when you were my age?"

  Paul nodded. In truth, his most vivid memories of Breaker Gorge involved descending to the mossy bottom with Denise Franklin and exploring, in the relative privacy of the culvert, the secrets that lurked beneath her clothing. "Would you like a lift home?" he asked, feeling generous in the mellow afterglow of that happy recollection.

  "Yeah, that would be great," Shane accepted at once, swinging off his bicycle and lifting into the empty bed of the truck.

  As soon as Paul issued the invitation he realized it was a mistake. But he couldn’t very well retract it. Maybe it was for the best that Paul drove directly to the Hudson house. If Shane was going to be working at the nursery for the next several weekends, Paul was bound to run into Bonnie. He might as well get used to seeing her.

  "You aren’t going to tell my mom, are you?" Shane asked nervously, climbing onto the seat beside Paul and shooting a quick glance at his bicycle through the rear window of the cab.

  "About Breaker Gorge? No," Paul promised.

  "It’s just—I mean..." Shane shrugged again. "She doesn’t understand stuff sometimes. She’s a lady, you know?"

  And how , Paul muttered under his breath.

  "So, you used to hang out at the gorge, huh," Shane said once Paul had resumed driving.

  "Sometimes."

  "Did you bike?"

  Paul tossed him a quick look. "Mostly I walked down with friends," he said carefully.

  "Girls?"

  Paul looked toward his passenger again. He wasn’t about to lie to Shane. "Yeah, sometimes."

  "Did you mess around?"

  Paul mulled over his response. "Why do you ask?"

  Shane squirmed in his seat. "I don’t know. Just curious."

  Paul knew there had to be more to his questions th
an simple curiosity, and he waited patiently for Shane to elaborate. After they’d passed a fallen log blocking part of the road, he did: "Matt told me this girl at school told him that this other girl likes me."

  "Do you like her?"

  "I don’t know. Like, I hardly know her. And even if I did, I wouldn’t know what to do with her."

  "You could always follow her lead," Paul suggested.

  "Yeah, I guess I could. She’s real foxy, you know? It’s like, she knows how to walk."

  "How to walk," Paul repeated, uncertain he’d heard Shane correctly.

  "Yeah. I mean, some girls, they walk sort of funny, you know? Like, they’re always looking over their shoulder, making sure someone’s watching them or something. Not Melinda. It’s like she doesn’t care who’s watching. She’s always got someplace to go."

  "She sounds pretty special," Paul remarked, because Shane seemed to expect him to say something.

  "Yeah, she is. For a girl, that is." He shrugged. "So, like, did you use to mess around with girls?"

  Paul’s mind filled with a vision of Bonnie, of her lips so soft against his and her silky hair spilling through his fingers. Shane’s question had centered on girls, not women, and he pushed away all thoughts of Bonnie.

  "I messed around some," he admitted. "I was a little bit older than you, though."

  "How old?"

  "I don’t know—fifteen, sixteen."

  "So, like, when you were my age, you didn’t care about girls at all?"

  "Oh, sure, I cared about them," Paul conceded. "I spent lots of time thinking about them. I just didn’t mess around much with them."

  "Right turn over here," Shane reminded him when they reached the intersection at the end of the road. "But, like—did you notice the way they walked?"

  "Definitely," Paul reassured him. "Some of those girls really knew how to walk right." He steered around the corner and onto Bonnie’s driveway—and cursed the woman under his breath. There she was, sitting on the porch and entertaining a man. Who the hell was this one? Paul wondered irately. Another reporter writing a book about her famous, saintly husband?